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How Much Has Global Warming Worsened California’s Drought? Now We Have a Number

With each passing year, human-caused global warming bullies California for more water. Each year, the heat squeezes more moisture from soils and ecosystems. This is because, as the atmosphere warms, its demand for moisture rises. Just as a puddle evaporates more quickly on a warm day, soils dry out more quickly during warmer years, which…

Being Rude to Your Doctor Could Be Bad for Your Health

In the interests of not being a jackass, you should probably be nice to your doctors. But if common courtesy isn’t a good enough reason, a recent paper suggests you’ll get worse medical treatment if you’re worse. The experiment put 24 different medical teams (1 doctor, two nurses) in charge of a newborn baby with…

Hardcore Pirates Are Reportedly Banning Windows 10

There’s casual Pirate Bay piracy, and then there’s private torrent trackers: members-only clubs that share the best movie and TV rips among themselves. As you’d expect, they tend to be pretty hardcore about privacy, enough so that some groups are banning members from using Windows 10. As TorrentFreak reports, groups like iTS and FSC have…

If Humans Never Existed, the World Would Have More Mammals

There aren’t many large mammals around anymore in, most of the world. That’s mostly because one mammal species — Homo sapiens — has taken a heavy toll on its competition. Now, a team of researchers demonstrates what would have happened to the world’s megafauna if humans had never existed. Today, sub-Saharan Africa is one of…

Sierra Leone Is Down To Its Last Cases Of Ebola

Here’s some great news out of West Africa: according to the World Health Organization, the outbreak is down to its last couple of cases, with no new cases reported since early August. The organization and local health officials are moving aggressively against potential cases as they track down and isolate the last identified patients currently…

Hubble Captured a Cosmic Optical Illusion

The round, bright, yellow objects near the center of this Hubble image are part of a massive galaxy cluster. If you look closely, several blue galaxies seem to form a wide circle around the cluster, and they all look strangely similar. That’s because they’re actually reflections of the same galaxy. The smaller blue galaxy is…

This Is What The 2015 Hugo Ballot Should Have Been

Last night, the Hugo Awards were handed out. And the fans rejected the attempt of a small minority to impose its ideology on the nominations via slate-voting. But last night, we also learned which works would have been on the ballot, if the nominations hadn’t been rigged. As we covered in last night’s liveblog, the…

A Super Star Destroyer Is Manhattan Sized

Reddit user movielover278 made a neat comparison photo that puts a the size of a super Star Destroyer into perspective: it’s the size of Manhattan, give or take a couple of blocks. [Reddit]

Meet the People Who Find America’s Hidden Infrastructure

Welcome to Reading List, Gizmodo’s weekly gathering of the best science and technology stories on the internet. This week, we’ll search for buried infrastructure, tour the electronics factories of Shenzen, delve into the future of science fiction for the Anthropocene Epoch, and look back at Nintendo’s famous virtual reality flop. Miles of buried cables and…

Its Finale Time For Killjoys, And Everything Goes To Hell 

Killjoys’ first season comes to a close with Escape Velocity, it’s a packed episode that wraps up most of the first season’s storylines while launching everyone into what promises to be an interesting followup. Either it’s showrunners are really confident that they’ll get a second season, or they’ve just left us on a really annoying…

Here’s A Big Collection Of Some Very Small Books

Hungarian bibliophile Jozsef Tari has a small hobby: collecting miniature books. Since 1972, he’s been collecting the smallest books ever printed, and in that time, has acquired over 5,200 individual titles. I’ve heard of tiny books before, but I had no idea that they existed in large numbers like this. Tari noted that his books…

This Week’s Puzzle Puts Your Logical Reasoning to the Test

Don’t answer this puzzle too quickly. Read the question closely, and consider your answer carefully (especially if you’ve seen this kind of puzzle before). Sunday Puzzle #45: A Devious Selection Task This week’s puzzle is a twist on a logic problem devised in 1966 by cognitive psychologist Peter Cathcart Wason (we’ll talk more about its…

Bats in India Have Found a New Home on Coffee Plantations

If you’ve had a cup of coffee recently, the plants it grew on may once have been home to bats and other threatened wildlife. It turns out that when coffee plantations encroach on natural forest habitat, bats are happy to live in the coffee. A Biodiversity Hotspot The Western Ghats mountain range runs along the…

So You Want To Join The Empire: Chest Protection

The last couple of weeks, I’ve discussed some of the preparations for getting stormtrooper armor up and running: measuring, accuracy, and the differences between films. This week, let’s get to putting something together. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve trimmed down a kit to individual armor components, then sanded them down. The refinement process…

The James Webb Space Telescope Looks Like Gold Plated Space Origami

When it launches in October 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope will become the largest optical telescope in space. With its 6.5 meter wide mirror, it will gather infrared light from up to 13.5 billion light years away, giving astronomers a look at the earliest moments of the universe. But the mirror is too big…

The boardgame industry is getting a huge boost from crowdsourcing. Five Thirty Eight has a really fascinating look at how sites like Kickstarter are helping to fuel a renaissance in gaming, and how getting funds from gamers directly allows designers to innovate and experiment.

Watch Biologists Drop Flying Spiders Out of Trees for Science

Biologists have terrifying news: some spiders can fly. Of course, technically they’re just gliding, but that’s still a feat for a creature with eight legs and no wings. It’s also a big surprise for biologists. High in the rainforest canopies of Panama and Peru, a team of biologists gathered spiders from the genus Selenops. They’re…

It’s a Party! We’re Liveblogging the 2015 Hugo Awards!

After months of excitement and a wee bit of drama here and there, they’re finally here: the 2015 Hugo Awards! Because this is such a fascinating, unpredictable year, we’re going to liveblog the shit out of this one. Join us! Top image via Evan J. Peterson First off, here is the official livestream of the…

This Scene from Space is Almost too Perfect to be Real

The gentle red glow of aurora and the richness of a star-filled sky make a picture-perfect backdrop the International Space Station. The remote-controlled Canadarm was cocked in preparation to catch and pull in the JAXA space cargo tug HTV5 launched on Wednesday and due to arrive at the station on Monday. After unloading fresh supplies…

We Just Got a Sneak Peek at The Gorgeous Trailer For The Moon and the Sun

We just saw the first trailer for The Moon and the Sun, the movie version of Vonda McIntyre’s Nebula Award-winning 1997 novel, here at Worldcon in Spokane. It’s full of lavish beauty and intense passion, set in Louis XIV’s Versailles. In the Moon and the Sun trailer, we meet Marie-Josephe (Kaya Scodelario), a young orphan…